Landscape with a Herdsman and Goats
Gaspard Dughet·c. 1635
Historical Context
Gaspard Dughet, the French-born brother-in-law of Nicolas Poussin, painted this pastoral landscape around 1635 during his formative years in the Roman Campagna. Dughet specialized almost exclusively in landscape painting, developing a style that combined Poussin's classical order with a more spontaneous, naturalistic observation of the Italian countryside. His idealized pastoral scenes were enormously influential on English landscape gardening and painting in the eighteenth century.
Technical Analysis
Dughet's oil technique captures the warm tonality of the Italian countryside with broad, confident brushstrokes. The composition balances the classical format of framing trees with a naturalistic rendering of light and atmosphere across the middle distance.
Provenance
Sold Sotheby's, London, April 8, 1970, no. 80, as The Master of the Silver Birch, to Julius Weitzner, London [letters of December 20, 1982 and June 27, 1983 from Brendan Tyrrell, Sotheby's]; sold by Weitzner to the Art Institute, 1973.
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